


A Thousand Kisses

by Blueinkedfrost



Category: The Doctor's Wife - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Genre: F/F, Femslash, No Plot, Roleplay, Victorian lesbian erotica, explicit - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 04:58:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13139562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blueinkedfrost/pseuds/Blueinkedfrost
Summary: Lady Gwendoline Pomphrey takes it upon herself to educate the widow Isabel Gilbert in Latin poetry. Femslash ensues.





	A Thousand Kisses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RR_Duscan (damozel)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/damozel/gifts).



> _Love we (my Lesbia!) and live we our day,_  
>  _While all stern sayings crabbed sages say,_  
>  _At one doit's value let us price and prize!_  
>  _The Suns can westward sink again to rise_  
>  _But we, extinguished once our tiny light,_  
>  _Perforce shall slumber through one lasting night!_  
>  _Kiss me a thousand times, then hundred more,_  
>  _Then thousand others, then a new five-score,_  
>  _Still other thousand other hundred store._  
>  _Last when the sums to many thousands grow,_  
>  _The tale let's trouble till no more we know,_  
>  _Nor envious wight despiteful shall misween us_  
>  _Knowing how many kisses have been kissed between us._ \- Sir Richard Burton translation of Catullus V., _To Lesbia, (of Lesbos - Clodia?)_.

"Now, Isabel, you must correct these exercises on the adverbial accusative in Latin," said Gwendoline. "I made them especially for you, and you should at least pay attention."

Lady Gwendoline Pomphrey and the widow Isabel Gilbert sat intimately in an expansive, recently refurnished boudoir in Mordred Priory. A month previously, they had returned from a grand tour of the Continent, where Gwendoline had taken Isabel's education in hand and superintended her raptures through a thousand galleries and museums. Since their return to the country estate, Isabel and Gwendoline had taken immense pleasure in renewing and redecorating, choosing this particular room for most of their daily pleasures and study. The ladies now sat at a golden oak desk several hundred years old, decorated with lovely carvings of pea-pods that seemed to leap out of the wood. Before them, a magnificent bevelled window overlooked a balcony over green gardens. Gwendoline adorned an elegant Chippendale chair with slender curving lines, a clever find between her and Isabel from a London antique-shop overseen by an overworked assistant, while Isabel sat comfortably and lolled with a rebellious air in a Parisian plush green _bergère_.

"But I am so confused as to the poem you showed me," Isabel complained. "The Catullus one, that he wrote to Lesbia. Pray, what does 'basia' mean?"

"It means a simple show of friendly affection." Gwendoline approached the bergère and pressed her lips to the fairness of Isabel's forehead, where blue veins showed through ever so slightly on the pale delicate white skin.

"You are so kind and patient with all my foolish questions," Isabel said. She touched Gwendoline's right hand and entwined it in her own. "I do recall you saying that the verb often refers to a kiss on the hand."

Isabel raised Gwendoline's hand to her mouth. Her pink tongue scraped along Gwendoline's ring finger, like a cat would lightly sip milk, like a knight would daringly show affection to his lady before begging a favour from her, a scrap of cambric handkerchief to tie to his lance or even a fragment of her petticoat to keep close to his bosom. Isabel paid great attention to Gwendoline's hand, her fingers lightly palpating the flesh as if to seek out the spots of greatest sensitivity. The edge of her fingernail brushed the underside of Gwendoline's palm, teasing the soft skin that was untouched by any calluses or manual labour. Isabel loved the softness of Gwendoline's hands, noble and pampered since birth. Then Isabel touched and twisted so that only the ball of her finger swept Gwendoline's palm, turning and looping as if she wrote an elegant cursive message on the hand of her dear friend.

"It certainly refers to that, but in the particular poem, he kisses his lover a thousand times, then a hundred more, and then still more," said Gwendoline. "Would not that be a little tedious?"

"Where would he kiss her other than on the hand?" Isabel asked wonderingly. "All the great heroes and chivalrous knights kiss only on the hand."

Gwendoline laughed a gay tinkling laugh, high and silvery like a flute of glass and crystal. "Why, Isabel, do you not know that there are as many places to kiss as you have on your entire lovely face and form?"

"But you are the lovely one, not me." Isabel sighed, her chest delicately fluttering like a butterfly caught between two hands. She was embraced by Gwendoline, who slowly trailed her lips over Isabel's neck, descending with a delicious slowness. Gwendoline sat on Isabel's lap, the green plush chair large and comfortable enough to hold them both. "When I saw you, I thought you were a princess from books, a fair elegant imperial lady made out of china and crystal and stars rather than any mortal clay," said Isabel. "You seemed the duchess with glittering hair and azure eyes, heartless and pale and beautiful as the moon. I thought you would send people mad with a single glance at your beauty. Knights would fight and men would slit their throats for a touch from your hand, but you would be as unreachable as the Milky Way. I envied you and longed for you at the same time. I wished I were as beautiful as you."

Gwendoline loosened the stays on Isabel's dress, so that she could peel apart the many thin layers of delicate muslin and lay kisses on Isabel's collarbone. "Would it please you to know I envied you too? Fair china beauties are a penny a dozen at Mayfair. I knew the moment I saw you that I would never meet anyone like you. You had great black eyes like a Byzantine painting. I could see you wielding a dagger with light gleaming from those yellow eyes of yours. And I always admired your hair."

Gwendoline smoothly flicked up the skirts of Isabel's petticoat, and smiled at the double meaning of her compliment, both the hair on her head and elsewhere. "Your dear little cunny is also most finely covered, I assure you," she said. Between Isabel's drawers lay bare skin and her mound of Venus, which was covered with an abundance of curling dark black hair. Gwendoline's hand stole down and touched those rosy lips in the cleft of Isabel's legs.

"Oh, dear Gwendoline, you make me feel so oddly!" Isabel sighed and moaned. "Please tell me of the right course of action at this juncture."

Gwendoline's eager figures brushed lightly along the surface of Isabel's mound, barely skimming her inner lips. "Your role, my darling tutee, is to tell me how this pleases you."

"It pleases me greatly. I feel as if darting crickets were jumping along my nest," Isabel gasped. Gwendoline applied her fingers to Isabel's clitoris, teasing it to get it to peek out of its hiding place. "That is better. I feel as if there were a copper mine inside me and it is on fire with a mysterious green flame. I feel as if my heart would leap from my body and do five somersaults in a row. Gwendoline, have mercy on me! Do but frig me more so, and do not excite me beyond bearing."

"I will demonstrate a French custom," Gwendoline explained. "The technique of gamahuching."

Gwendoline lowered her head to Isabel's quim and applied her tongue with an enthusiasm so different to the languor she showed in typical life. Isabel squirmed in pleasure, her hands holding Gwendoline's upper arms, her fingers tattooing tremulous beats along them. Gwendoline's tongue traced letters onto Isabel's skin. Isabel could perceive the beginnings of her own name, then wild delight overtook her and she could no longer recite each letter as it came. She spent with a great fervour and gave a birdlike cry of surprise and joy.

Then Gwendoline stood and turned away from Isabel in a rustle of skirts. But it was only a feigned turn, for she glanced back to look at Isabel lounging in the chair in her attitude of complete debauchery. Where Lady Gwendoline Pomphrey still looked every inch of the respectable lady, from perfectly starched cuffs to high collar and carefully banded hair, Isabel Gilbert was deliciously undone. Her skirts were pulled high above her legs and her petticoats and drawers were split to either side. Her stays were mostly undone and her pure white bosom heaved in blissful animation. Isabel's hair had somehow come loose in her ecstasy and hung in black sweat-stained strands about her face and neck, and her yellow eyes glinted like the eyes of a witch. Gwendoline smiled at her handiwork. "Are you pleased with this lesson thus far, Isabel?" she asked.

"Oh, that I might only do something to repay you for your efforts," Isabel said. "I fear I owe you a great debt."

Gwendoline walked without hurrying to the desk. Like any other respectable antique desk, it contained a drawer that deserved the name of 'secret', and so stimulated Isabel's imagination to all eternity. Only two keys within Mordred Priory fit that particular lock, and one of them rested on Gwendoline's chatelaine at all times. Gwendoline pressed the bunch of peapods that caused the small lock to show itself, and inserted her oiled key into it. The secret drawer was revealed.

"I hope that you have been reading the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini with attention," Gwendoline said. "I was told in confidence that he was the secret sculptor of this delightful object, which may be entirely false but it is a beautiful creation. Do you see this _godemiché_ before you?"

The object was a carefully sculpted phallus in veined marble, with streaks of black and white running through it and criss-crossing. So as to avoid excessive heaviness and give more texture, wide hollows in repeated patterns were engraved into its surface. Leather straps to hold the implement to the sporting partner's body were attached to it.

Isabel contemplatively tapped a long pale forefinger against her chin. "The fastenings look too large to fall about an arm or a leg," she considered. "Considering the principles of logical deduction that you have instructed me in, could you place it about my hips, Gwendoline?"

"If you wish to try the experiment," Gwendoline replied, and the two ladies fell to the large chaise-longue in yellow and white that gave them a comfortable position in which to attempt their sport. Lady Gwendoline permitted Isabel to lay her prone with a cushion under her back, to take up her skirts and lower her stockings. Her stockings were made of such fine material they were thin as cobwebs, and could have been drawn through a ring small enough to fit on her little finger. Isabel rolled them down with care, taking time to lay increasingly fierce kisses on Gwendoline's firm thighs. She nipped at Gwendoline's skin with white teeth, and sucked hard enough to leave a faint red mark, where no one but Gwendoline and Isabel should know it existed. Her mouth covered Gwendoline's thighs and the outside of her her hips, teasing and taunting her while going no further.

Gwendoline gasped in pleasure at this preliminary engagement, and at length directed Isabel to the particular attentions she wanted, when she could no longer bear such teasing. "Now, Isabel, do line up the instrument with my foremost passage; as so; and - yes - you should indeed fondle my clitoris while you engage me; the pattern of thrusts should be a little faster - precisely - you quite undo me! You must continue!" While the upper half of Gwendoline's body was as neat as before, her soft pink lips pouted and pleaded for more. Her right hand intertwined with Isabel's left and she pressed down on Isabel's fingers, urging her onwards. The instrument inside her was at first cold, but warmed swiftly by her inner walls and by her meeting Isabel thrust for thrust.

"What a fine lancewoman you are, my squire!" Gwendoline exclaimed. "You will joust me off my perch if you are not careful. And I should not mind it, no, not in the least. Be my champion and pierce my shield right through. In the lists - you may win this tourney - and the prize is that we never need stop, for the godemiché never tires and neither shall I!"

"If I am squire to a knight, then I fight a duel for the heart of the fair Gwendoline." Isabel too panted as she spoke, though she was not so far gone as Gwendoline. Isabel knelt over her lover, her knees astride Gwendoline's legs, and kissed her lady on the mouth. "Would you like your prize to be the heart of the dark Isabel?"

"My squire - " Gwendoline gasped. "Let the battle begin!"

It was an engagement with merits on both sides. Isabel had much enthusiasm, while more craft and cool planning was the share of the Lady Gwendoline. They challenged each other to greater heights of exertion and acrobatic exercise of all their limbs. At length, the contest was declared a draw. Gwendoline lay sprawled in Isabel's arms over the oak desk, disarranging their books and study materials.

Gwendoline retained a little self-possession in her role as the teacher. "A good lesson," she complimented Isabel.

And Isabel recited the poem she had earlier questioned perfectly from memory, though drowsily: "Dein, cum milia multa fecerimus, conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus, aut nequis malus invidere possit, cum tantum sciet esse basiorum." She had always been a fast learner. "Then, when we have kissed each other many thousand times, we will forget the number so that no one dares to envy us," Isabel translated. "And after that we shall begin again."

Gwendoline thought that she had taught Isabel many things, but it was Isabel who had taught her how to love without fear. They had done this often before, playing teacher and student or knight and squire or damsel and villain or other roles as the fancy struck them, and would hope to do it again tomorrow.

_Let us love, my Lesbia, and live another day ..._

The ladies comfortably embraced each other as fair sunlight spilt in from the open window. The day and many days after it lay before them as a gift, and they would take the light that shone.


End file.
